Whether in schoolrooms or kitchens, state houses or church pulpits, women have always been historians, largely through their roles as teachers of history and historical interpreters, and within African-American communities, women began to write histories soon after the Revolution. Their speeches, textbooks, poems, and polemics did more than just recount the past; they also protested their present status in the United States through their reclamation of that past. This book surveys the creative ways in which women like Maria Stewart, Francis E.W. Harper, and Anna Julia Cooper, as well as legions of unheralded educators, harnessed the power of print.